Naoya Inoue vs. Marlon Tanan Tapales & Seiya Tsutsumi vs. Kazuki Anaguchi RBR.

Upon rewatch it was good to see Tapales showing no fear and forcing Inoue to dig deeper and make adjustments. Round 5 was a very exciting round, especially considering it was the round after Tápales got dropped and chose to fight harder instead of folding. It was a very entertaining fight overall. This was the kind of fight that Inoue needed, in all honesty. Tápales came to fight and wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. If anything this loss has boosted Tápales. He’s made the Filipinos proud with that performance.

 

Haney has done a job getting into the head of some.

But of course he isn't fighter of the year. That's Inoue and then Crawford.

 

Thanks for the app heads up .

 

Tapales feet seemed stuck in sand he should have employed a come to me tactic instead of just standing up close & leading Inoue right too him, though he did bring his best & that's all you could ask for but clearly he was lacking many facets & upon watching the first round you knew he didn't really have a chance at this one, there was times he had corned Inoue to the ropes & didn't go for any combinations or body attacks i even over heard the lost Sean Gibbons yelling it out a few times towards the end rounds to the fight,

We missed out on the Casimero/Inoue fight bad that had real action & drama written all over it, sad.

 

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Tapales looks like an domestic abuse victim after the fight.

 

Especially when you have him side by side with Inoue post fight

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Crazy as a lot of Inoue's shots were being partly or fully blocked by his high guard, just shows you what kinda power Inoue generates

 

Just checked on Japanese twitter & news with 穴口一輝 (how his name is written in Japanese) & no updates on his status there either. I really hope he is ok, don't need another Boxing tragedy

 

Tapales was clearly a much better win than Errol Spence. What Inoue has done and how he has done it speaks for itself, it is much better thanFloyd did achieve, or almost certainly what Bud can achieve .

Forget boxing politics and political correctness, this is the only guy that surpasses Usyk P4P.

 

Inoue's face said it all @ the end,not one mark on Inoue, took Tapales to school.

 

I don't think he struggled either. I feel he was very much fighting within his comfort zone. The thing that stood out for me was his lack of movement, he seemed quite happy to just plant himself right in front of Tapales for long periods as if he had nothing to fear and was happy to trade if Tapales opened up.

Tapales was game and didn't just mentally quit after being dropped and instead dug deep and had his best round up to that point. He tried to switch things up, dropping the high guard and going back to his lean back style that worked so well vs Ahmadaliev. But Inoue again forced him back into the high guard and started doubling the right hand, which in the end proved to be the shot that ended the fight.

I see this as more of a workman like performance from Inoue. It wasn't spectacular but it was hardly a bad performance either, just a solid one. Perhaps he didn't feel there was much of a threat against Tapales and so didn't reach the heights he did vs Fulton and Donaire before him.

 

I think the ref also messed up by not calling a KD in round 2 off Inoue's jab, granted Tapales wasn't hurt so a flash KD but a legit KD nonetheless. I would have liked to confirm but they never replayed that in slow-mo

2 KD's, 8 of 10 rounds won, & a KO to finish things off & some people are still unhappy!

I think Inoue was deliberately planting himself at times & taking shots (will look for his post fight thoughts for confirmation) to get his own in which is why all the crying about how he got hit but as he told Butler's camp once when they called him defensively weak:

Joe Gallagher, who serves as Butler's trainer and manager even in public training, pointed out a weakness in Inoue's defense. When asked about this during the press conference, the Monster replied:

"I am confident that if I really focus on defense, I probably won't get hit at all. In boxing, the goal is to go for the knockout, and there will inevitably be some hits in the process. In reality, defense is my strongest suit, and I want to show that. Collecting the four belts is crucial for me as it represents being the number one in the bantamweight division. After collecting all four, I aim to move up to the super bantamweight division. I want to continue evolving."

https://the-ans.jp/news/290121/

He doesn't mind taking a few shots to get the KO & putting on a show for the fans because he said otherwise it will be boring for both him ^ the fans